euphoria
by freakinfarkle
Summary: Euphoria is a common ailment amongst those afflicted by love, Farkle knew. Serotonin and dopamine were sent through the synapses to proceed with feelings of happiness. But never did he think that he'd meet the one who would send those tingles through his veins, those shudders from underneath his skin. Never in a million years. [riarkle AU]
1. prologue

"Who's that kid?"

Maya said, "Which one are you pointing to, Riley? Really, you should specify who you're tring to identify if you want me to give you an accurate reply."

"The one with the ruffled brown hair, Peaches," said Riley.

"Minkus?"

"That's his name?"

"His last name, actually, but yeah."

"What about his first name?"

"Does it matter?" Then, at Riley's skeptical look at her: "I really don't know it. In Art, Miss Keller refuses to say his first name, and always calls him by his last name. It must be pretty bad."

"Well, I think he's cute."

Maya snorted. "Him?" she chuckled. "I guess he's not bad, but what about Lucas, the guy you've liked for over three years now?"

"Wow, Maya, can't I think someone's cute without it going back to that dreamy hunk? He's a little cute, but of course, I'm not going to give up on Lucas because of him, y'know. It's just that he's adorable whenever he's reading his books and scrunching his nose up in that little way he does."

"You haven't just noticed this right now? You've had your eye on him for awhile, haven't you?"

Riley blushed. "Well, I've noticed him a week ago, and I -"

"And you haven't known his name for over a week?" asked Maya incredulously.

Her blush continued to rise up the features of her face, and she hid it in her hands as she said, "Hey, I've only been watching him during lunch. I can't just go up to him and ask him his name, and say, 'Oh hey, I've looked at you, and I just wanted to tell you that you look cute.' That's impossible. I can't even do that with Lucas, so how would I be able to tell this random adorable kid, eh?"

Maya shrugged. "You can admit it to me."

"Yeah, because I've known you for basically all of my life. There's barely anything I can admit to you, y'know."

"I know."

"Good. Now, you gotta learn his name."

"Whaddaya mean _I_ have to? Shouldn't _you_ do that on your own?"

"You have a class with him. You can talk to him."

"But that's Art, Riley, and I don't like wasting my time trying to talk to other people while I work on my own stuff. It's distracting."

"Then why not just do it after class? I'm sure you can do it."

"How about no? I'm not talking to him. You want to know his name, so you talk to him."

"Peaches," said Riley in a singsong voice. "I know you can do it."

She shook her head. "There's no way," she said, her voice pouring in her reserve tenacity.

"Do me a favor, Peaches, please."

She looked down at Riley. Her brown eyes were glistening, and she sighed, falling easily for the bait. "Okay, okay."

"Yay!" yelped Riley as she enveloped the blonde in a tight hug. "Thanks."

"Whatever."


	2. entrance

So long. The period dragged out for years, it seemed to the lone boy resting his head on his desk. His papers were splayed in a fashion unconventional to admire and adore, yet he cared not for their contents more than he cared for the disposition of his GPA.

Droning Mr. Hemwick stood at the front of the class behind his little mahogany table, tapping the chalkboard with a pointer tipped with a cursor that was blown from proportion. He asked a question about the fourteen hundreds or something, and there were people answering them with reluctance as they were intentionally called on, and he didn't interest himself in the past.

His images had dwelled in the wanted future so he could get away from the matters of the present, so the blanket that voided his mind with ease and comfort had suddenly burst with visions of stars and planets of colors unimaginable. The violet scene placed in the forefront of his mind took him on a tour of the fictional galaxies he created on his computer in the depths of nocturnal life.

Drowsy, he felt his side being shaken from the right. He groaned as the vacuum of space had dissipated into the view of the boring classroom he was condemned to. His eyes closed and squinted in the blinding glare that shone indefinitely in his face. The adjusted soon, and he blinked a few times to see the aggravated, ruddy face of Hemwick staring at him with choler living in the recesses of his bespectacled eyes.

"Mr. Minkus, I'm sure that you are aware of the fact that this class is a requirement to graduate," said the angry professor.

Farkle blinked. He looked from left to right. All around, the students cooped into the small interior of the classroom peered at him with curiosity and anticipation. Some had their phones out, expecting a brawl to appear within their own visage; some hung back with their friends and bundled together with conversations weaving in and out of his comprehension. There was a faint smile on all of their faces, amused by the prospect of someone as intellectual as him sleeping in the presence of increasingly strict Hemwick.

Farkle smiled to himself. Hemwick's obtrusive face remained in his visage, occupying the center of his view with the wrinkles that fell down his features and accumulated grotesquely at its bottom. Wincing at the man's unattractive looks, he answered easily, "I know full well of this, sir."

"Then why are you interested more in sleeping than you are in the content of my teachings?"

Farkle shrugged. "It might be that others cannot come to admit it to themselves, sir, yet I have to admit that your monotonous voice induces exhaustion to many of the individuals you teach," he said smoothly, almost smugly. "I am afraid that you have had this epiphany administered by a teenager who shouldn't even know many of the answers to your questions, but right now, it seems that I have the perfect response to your inquiry, sir."

The class was in silent shock as they saw the expression of confidence spreading athwart Hemwick's face dropped as disgustingly as his growing wrinkles.

But a façade was adhered to his features as quickly as his face melted prior, and the attitude of superiority was rejuvenated within the recesses of its creviced, crimson surface. The cumulative groups that crowded together gasped collectively after the man spoke his intimidating words. "Maybe you'll like sleeping more in ISS then, Mr. Minkus," he snapped.

Farkle grimaced, yet he stood from his seat and collected his uncompleted work into the depths of his backpack. His own emotions, fueled by the engendered anger that plagued the mind of his mad professor, broiled deep underneath his flesh and skin and crawled through his veins, but they did not show in the calm, serene mask he displayed in the presence of the red-faced man. "Fine," he said roughly, brushing past him and hitting his shoulder.

Briskly passing through the slew of student-laden desks strewn about the classroom, he heard the faint whispers of the interested individuals as he stamped noisily against the tiles that spread from underfoot. Soon they fell silent. He had opened the door easily with a flick of his wrist and an inward pull, whereupon he entered the barren hallway illuminated by the steady flickering of the florescent lights above. He didn't turn back.

The hallways were occupied only by the lockers which stood stagnant to his left and right. The linoleum sparkled its black-and-white, checkered pattern that sprawled across the distance between the green sentinels, and his shadow crawled in front of him as he heard the clamor that emerged from the classrooms he quickly passed in his frustration. His face

The ISS room, which laid clear across the campus with its bright-colored door and its promotional posters ringing round the doorway where the kids of ailment frequented willingly, was almost empty when he came to it. He swung open the door and ushered cleanly into the room without knocking. Mrs. Bracknell, who sat at the desk in the middle of the three elongated tables which three kids currently accommodated, pivoted her head to face the boy. A disapproving look graced her elder features, contorting disgustingly into a conception that broiled with contempt, and she waved him over with her hand.

He loathed Bracknell. She had been one of the teachers that busted him long ago whenever he was experimenting with dangerous chemicals whilst the others in his lunch period ate their food. She had dragged him from the classroom and reported him to Jaeger, who condemned him from the classroom for the remainder of the week. He worked in the hallway with only his notebook and pencil, and whenever he saw Bracknell pass in the hallway, she stared down at him with a look that bred nothing but disapproval. Usually, he ignored her since then, rather commending his amenity whenever he had finally extracted himself from her asphyxiating grasp, yet now, he felt as though his head would implode.

Surely, having to deal with both Hemwick and Bracknell today was enough to warrant a combustion on his part, but he thought nothing more than evil thoughts as he swaggered defiantly to meet with the other teenagers huddling all together at the table facing away from Bracknell's impeding gaze.

She tried to yell at Farkle, saying, "You disruptive kid, get back here right now," but he merely gave her a look of contempt, his lip curling in disgust, before he sat down shortly thereafter. She stayed silent, staring at the back of his head as though she wished her eyes could penetrate his cranium and expose his intelligent brain, but nothing had happened to the teenager as he established his bony rear into the seat. His bag had slammed noisily against the table distance between the wall and the unoccupied surface of the scrawl-laden table, and this garnered the collective attention of the three individuals that sat to his left.

His blue eyes had noticed the attentiveness they offered him from the side of his visage, and as he prepared to ignore them just as he had Bracknell, settling the side of his head onto the soft fabric of his backpack, he heard a chirpy voice that intoned excitement to the new presence of a student. "Oh hello, tall person!" the voice said happily, belonging quite obviously to one of the long-haired females that sat to either side of the short-haired guy resting easily betwixt them. He assumed that it was the one brunette to the far left, of course, for it would've been louder and more obnoxious if the blonde girl beside him had practically screamed in his ear. Yet he still had a problem whomever was speaking. That's too happy for someone who's entrapped within the confines of this inane room, he thought.

His forehead crinkled in annoyance as he processed her words, so he pushed himself further into his backpack, keeping his voice in his throat as words of obscenity aching at the tip of his chap lips. He hated people who screamed, really. They engendered his headaches to continue rather impedingly, banging on the sides of his head so that he had to reach into his backpack's closed pocket and extract a bottle of ibuprofen to soothe the pain that throbbed in vast hostility, and he loathed it so.

The girl's voice, although he wished it to abate in the silence that brought continued, "I don't know why you're here, but it's nice to see that someone else could join us in this inspirational room. Wouldn't you say, Lucas? What about you, Maya?"

"Well," said the blonde girl beside him, a smarm deeply intoned in her voice, "he's rather skinny and scrawny to have fought someone, so I'd say that it's better than what Ranger Rick did earlier." That must be Maya, he thought.

Farkle lifted his head up to see the three of them. They all looked comparatively different from the other, and no same feature was replicated on their individual faces.

The guy seated between the two attractive girls (there was no doubt that the brunette was a smidgen more pretty than the snarky blonde at his side, but he pushed that thought aside for now) has handsome, his broad-shoulders and thin torso elevating his appeal farther than he thought necessary. He seemed to have an eternal smile plastered upon his features, lest he redact the pretty-boy persona for just a second. I guess he's Lucas, thought Farkle.

Lucas stared hard at Maya. "Shortstack," he said sternly, as if talking to a naughty child, "you know that I only had argued with the guy. Y'all joined in –"

"Not until you had punched him in the face," she countered.

"Not the face, Maya," said the brunette.

Maya held up a hand. "Oh – I'm sorry, Riley," she said. "To give him the benefit of the doubt, it had started at the chest, and it ended clearly at the face. There's a reason why he's currently sitting in the nurse's office with a few missing teeth."

Riley smiled nonetheless. "Hey, Jeremy'll be all right. He won't suffer too much damage." She wound her arm round Lucas's, linking them together in an intimate embrace. Her sweet smile had gathered to gaze up at the boy lovingly. "You're a softy, aren'tcha, big guy?"

"Yep," he answered. He leaned down to peck her lips, and she returned the gesture gratefully.

Maya turned her attention to Farkle once more. Mesmerized by the dynamic the two smitten teenagers had, Farkle had paid no observation to anything else, and it was only when she snapped her fingers together in his face that he was thrown from his torpor and into reality.

Shaking his head, he fixed her with a small stare that blinded him from the romance occurring between Lucas and Riley. "Hello," he said in a low, rough whisper, finding out, so suddenly, that his lips had gone dry. He licked them with a dry tongue, and tried the greeting again in a louder intonation, to where Maya could actually hear him.

"You're that smart kid, aren'tcha?" she asked. "The one with the weird name and the rich dad?"

Farkle grimaced. He had met blatant people before (he, in fact, was one himself) but the axiom she spoke with such conviction and truth had sliced through his serene mask and revealed to her the meddled frustration that lay unpleasantly underneath the calm waters. His entire name was always brought to attention when someone wished to jest about its queer disposition, which occasionally happened when he bespoke his understanding of the material after his full designation was called to attention so suddenly. And it was common knowledge that Minkus Corporations, owned by his father, would indict him of being the only affluent child of Stuart Minkus, CEO and founder.

Yet these two things of knowledge were seldom brought up in modern conversation, for interest in the answers to the homework or the offering of favors for one's essay to be completed was more frequented than those who statements. He withhold no information, though, thinking it false and artificial to be something of lies that he knew he wasn't, so he said slowly, "Yes, that's me."

She smirked at him, her thin lips quirking upward. "Then I haven't mistaken you for another goofy-looking kid," she joked.

He held a faint smile. "And I assume that you're Maya?" he inquired.

She lifted a finger to her lips. "Shh," she insisted, looking around suspiciously. Then she turned to him again, the smirk broadening obscenely. "You wouldn't want to be caught speaking my name in public, wouldya?"

"There's no trademark claim on the name Maya," he said defensively.

"The Fine Brothers trademarked the word react," she retorted. "If they can get away with that little mess, I think I have more than a right to have my own word trademarked, so I don't want to hear it."

Farkle laughed. It wasn't too loud, really, just a baritone sound that rumbled in his chest with joviality, but it was loud enough to rouse Maya into cackling alongside him.

Riley and Lucas separated from one another, their thin slaver slipping from their lips. Wiping themselves free of their shared saliva, they peered carefully at Farkle and Maya clenching tightly to their sides. Maya's laughing had rose to an immense height, and it engendered Farkle's to skyrocket as well, and he smacked his hand against the table hard. Neither had cared that they were disrupting the bleak atmosphere that shrouded them in unbearable silence, and they spoke in bare gasps as they attempted to articulate the reasoning for their chortling to the ignorant couple who stared at them with cumulatively perplexed expressions.

Bracknell, who had not been heard since Farkle had defiantly sat himself down at the table with Riley, Maya and Lucas, had approached from behind them, her squat, little legs wobbling from side to side as she yelled, "Silence, you incompetent children! You have been sent to ISS not to talk or have fun, but to have yourselves punished for the things that you did in your classrooms. Listen to me when I talk to you, and stop your laughing at this moment!"

But Farkle took a look at her reproachful, scorning face, and he laughed harder, unable to control the chuckles that escaped inadvertently from between his chap lips. He felt as though they were to split if he kept smiling so broadly, yet he couldn't help or assist himself in his futile attempts to prevent the myriad chortles from leaving his throat. Maya hadn't been much more support, either, and the other two had joined in as Farkle curled into a mess of amusement and vented frustration. Soon the classroom had roared with laughter that nearly burst the ceiling, and the slamming on the table had grown in levels uncontrollable by a single woman that looked more broad and stocky than she did feminine and slender.

Unutterable words were spoken underneath her breath, and her futile trying to sedate the sedentary teenagers laughing themselves high were thrown into the wind. She pivoted uselessly on her stump of a leg and hobbled uneasily back to her desk with a sour frown plagued her lips. Plopping into her seat, she looked envious at the children she was supposed to be keeping under her small foot, and Farkle was at the center of it all.

They had all relaxed and momentarily spoke to each other before they bundled back into the blanket of laughter that kept them warm and fuzzy, and Farkle thought that he had finally found a group that he could enjoy hanging out with. The nerds had disapproved of his looks and how he brought on attention by all multitudes of unwanted females to their table; the hipsters claimed that he wasn't hip enough for them, and his existence amongst them would bring slander upon their undiscovered band and musician names, many which were too obfuscated to even comprehend in the English language; the literature gurus even had thought him to be too advanced for their standard sad poems and depressing amalgamations of bloody gore and high-school drama. So it felt honestly refreshing to feel a part of a group that accepted him for who he was than someone who was unacceptable to their respective ideals and morals. Maya had drawn him in with her jesting demeanor, and the company of all three had made him lush and comfortable round them, more than he even had felt in the presence of his cold, distant parents.

He finally had . . . friends.

The queries of whether or not this was actually true occurred when he was released from school later than usual alongside with Maya, who decidedly stayed back as Riley and Lucas left together. She stared at them longingly as they left side-by-side, and then grabbed his arm and hurried after them.

He didn't think anything of it at the time, the euphoria piling quickly, inexorably. Nor did he think of much other than the brunette in the coming days, and how their friendship would blossom in its subsequent naivete.

But soon, it would consume it, and this was only its true beginning.


	3. unite

Farkle was accepted for once, he noticed as the week had lengthened and the budding relationship between the original three had grown to something more than a pleasant acquaintanceship that passed through him like arbitrary, elementary physics.

Always at lunch, he'd find himself huddled in the recesses of the abandoned chemistry lab, experimenting there whilst he made calculations and advertised his own work before the period ended and he was required to advance to his next class. It was lone and quiet and ambient down in that small lab, and he enjoyed himself there whilst he had no friends to adhere himself to, no impressions he had to uphold to keep his reputation spot-free and clean.

Now, he didn't have to fret about occupying himself in his work (he didn't want to be his father, immersing himself deeply within the plots of the economic department). He had friends that he now had to interact with, and he pondered if this was truly a change that he enjoyed.

Well, he thought, it's better than being alone, I guess.

Today, Riley and Maya dragged him along to their table after he'd just gotten his food and prepared himself for its consumption in the chem lab, and the beaming Lucas had joined their accommodated table as Riley and he were conversing about the fact that literature could be taken as art rather than seeing it as another genre of creation entirely. Maya thought about joining in and telling Riley that painting just a few bits of purple cats on canvasses didn't count towards her credibility as an artist, but out of the corner of his eye, Farkle saw that Lucas had stopped her before her mouth could spurt its unintentionally hurtful commentary.

Riley said, "Y'know, it's not really a piece of art if you can't see what it says. They're words on a page, not a drawing on a paper."

"But art can be described in myriad ways, Riley," argued Farkle. "It can be the exploration of different ideas displayed abstractedly by creators that want to express themselves and their thinking processes. Have you read many books?"

Riley huffed. "Yes, Mr. Genius, I have."

"Then you should know that the ideas processed by those people have come from a deep passion that they don't take for granted. Its use it similar to the ways that artists find a spark that sends them into a flurry that brings out their entire mind upon the canvas." He looked at Maya. "You paint," he said abruptly. "Isn't there a small portion of you that just wants to flame and flicker when you put the brush to the canvas?"

Maya sternly glared at him. "Don't ask me those kinds of questions, Farkle," she said. "It's not fun to reveal to others what drives me and what doesn't."

He lifted an apologetic hand. "Excuse me –"

"You're definitely excused," retorted Maya.

He allowed himself a small smile before turning back to Riley. Her brown eyes were glistening whilst her hair was bellowing from the sides of her head, cascading down her shoulders. "There is an internal flame."

She smiled warmly at Farkle. "Uh-huh."

"And it burns brightly. It's a combustion that is caused by two separate explosive elements that chemically react. The flame bursts so suddenly that it consumes almost everything that it comes across. It's like a star that goes supernova, really, and all that you feel is the idealistic venture and drive to push and move on."

Lucas said, his face turned up slightly, "I don't think it's really that intense."

Maya shrugged. "I think that you just can't understand half the words he's saying sometimes, Huckleberry," she said, smirking smarmily at him as she tossed a stray grape his way.

He dodged the tossed grape, weaving from its trajectory deftly before it splattered against his freshly cleaned polo shirt. "I can," he insisted. Then: "Sometimes it takes me a minute, but I figure it out, Shortstack. Besides, it's not like you speak fluent Farkle. None of us can, except for him."

There was always room to learn, he thought. They could be taught the ways of how I was raised by my parents, and perhaps they could understand me better. Then he decided against it, internally shaking his head back and forth. They'd be abound by the absolute intelligence he would shove down their throats, and then they would back away, reproachfully retreating away from his form as he attempted to reconcile with them by apologizing. The abhorrent scene passed through his mind quickly, reminding him of all the visions and imaginations he produced in his spare time, thinking of all the clusters of unblinking fireflies compiled together and glowing brighter than anything in the universe.

And he relaxed at this. His tightened shoulders slumped unconcerned, and his tense demeanor dissipated as he laid lazily on the table.

He watched as Riley looked at Lucas, smiling. "We can understand him the way he is, you hunk," she said, a tease entering her voice as she slapped his arm playfully. "Besides, it's not like he's all too bad with the stuff he says. I think it's poetic."

"I think it's babble," said Maya, popping a small grape into her mouth and chewing whilst speaking. "But it's not intolerable babble, so I'll tolerate it."

"Perhaps you should close your mouth when you chew your food, Maya," suggested Farkle.

She just sardonically began chewing louder than usual to annoy Farkle for reasons unbeknownst to him.

Her crystalline-blue eyes had served him with a gaze that was caulk-full with knowledge he knew not, and obviously, this frustrated him. Clearly, it hadn't been as strong nor as aggravating as it might have been if Hemwick was withholding information from him, yet it still rather irked him when she quirked her lips and furrowed her brow to indicate that she knew something he didn't. He didn't pursue such frustrations, though, deciding to keep himself occupied by jesting alongside her about their two romantic friends, and occasionally he would include himself within sessions that partook in the process of unserious degradation of an individual's personality or appearance.

"That's what you call a roasting session," she had told him earlier that week as she got finished degrading a small freshman that ushered through the hallways that he and her shared together to approach their separate classes. "You should try it sometimes, Farkle. I assume you'd be good at it with your quick wits. Just don't try to do it to me."

He accessed this memory as easily as he could recite the first twenty or so numbers of pi when all that was required was the two identical places, and though he found that her advice to try it out had not assisted him within the debate he and Riley were currently immersed in, he reminded himself that his quick wits had actually existed despite their absence in the vast vacuum of his ceaselessly-spanning mind and its bright notions and ideas that so suddenly burst into a combustion that destroyed its own corresponding thoughts in its deadly wake.

Turning his attention back to Riley, he popped his head up from his crossed arms. "If you can't see, how do you know what art is? Is it an illusion?" he asked abruptly. "How can you experience the passion of art if you don't know how art is created nor what it looks like?"

Riley's mouth suddenly went dry. She licked her lips with a dry tongue and said, "You can't know what art is without seeing."

Lucas made a sound of delight. "Go, Riley," he said softly.

She smiled at him, quickly pecking his lips and returning to look at the hardened scientist and their ongoing debate.

Farkle grimaced at the gesticulations, yet didn't let up his argument. "But the imagination is vast and unending," he reasoned. "For example, you can hear someone speaking the words of a book and can imagine what things look like, what the smell like, what they feel like, what they taste like or what they sound like. Your imagination is only resisted by the ideas that make up your reality and the supposed fact that surrounds you at all times. Truly, it's not something you can take for granted, the imagination is."

"But if that's true, how can you imagine what things look like if you've actually never seen things?" she asked. "If you've never seen anything, how can you explain color to someone blind?"

It was his turn to go dry-mouthed. "I would tell them it was something on the light spectrum," he said, his throat growing dehydrated. He took a long gulp of his chocolate milk.

"Then how someone actually know what light is if they've never seen it?" she queried.

Farkle said nothing. His mouth was ajar; he was aghast. Maybe she's not as naïve as she looks to be, he pondered thoughtfully.

"Slay, Riley, slay!" shouted Maya, slamming her hand against the table as Farkle sat there dumbfounded, his bewilderment explained merely by the inability to explain.

Then he smiled stupidly, a goofy grin trailing across his lips and broadening them from side to side. Good job, he congratulated Riley internally.


	4. perspective

He was disinterested in the food that had waited for him at the elongated table where he and his father, and sometimes his mother, if she allowed herself time off from her immersive work, taken their meals and sat in silence. The disheveled appearance of his father at the head of the table, eating his food with a distant stare that didn't notice his son's presence in the least capacity possible, didn't hint Farkle at any thought of disarray. Hence, the boy genius sat without a word spoken, taking the cutlery in his hands and spinning them between his fingers lazily.

As he fell into a distant torpor that was drawn from the boring reality of his own expensive household, his thoughts drifted soon to the sweet Matthews girl he had the chance to meet and befriend, and a large smile had graced his features without his permission. Yet he kept it there, knowing that suppressing it could only lead to the desire for the smile to germinate into a broader and less tense smile that expressed the innards of his scarce emotions. The steak that smothered the plate with leaking strands of red liquid was replaced with the vision of Riley Matthews, smiling at him, touching him with her small, dainty fingers, hugging him to her petite form, her face splitting in complete jovilaity as she saw him approach.

The silence that accommodated the dining room for years had disappeared in fright and fear as Stuart, outfitted in a cashmere business suit that garbed him in an aloof disposition, cleared his throat quite loudly, and this caught the attention of his son. Farkle looked up curiously to peer at the man, his raised eyebrow demonstrating his perplexity at the attempt to articulate any type of conversation with his biological offspring. The cynicism that was evident in his stare wasn't a prospect that Stuart was interested in, so he said nothing about it.

"You finally have friends, Farkle?" asked Stuart instead. His attempt at happiness had failed miserably, sputtering indefinitely and falling into an obvious spiral which engendered a disgusted grimace to appear on his son's face.

"I had no idea you had any interest in my personal life," he said, unsurprised by the statement so abruptly bespoke. He picked at his food. His fork had redirected the corn amid the seasoned steak sitting on the infamous porcelain plate, placing them around it in orbitals that served like electrons floating around an atom's nucleus.

"You're right," agreed Stuart, although his thin face that left little room for his forced smile to stretch across his features. "But my old childhood friend Cory Matthews had told me that there was a strange kid hanging around his daughter lately. I asked him if he was her boyfriend, and he told me no. Then he smiled at me and mentioned that he had my last name." He leveled Farkle with his inherited blue eyes, the knowing gaze penetrating his appetite and relegating his entire discombobulated thoughts. "I knew it was you."

Farkle shrugged. There was no reason that his father couldn't inquire to the facts of his personal life, yet his impersonal demeanor towards his son had left him in a cold, distant aura that surrounded him in a shroud of camouflage. Affection was only displayed by gifts of inherited smarts and books of science fact that furthered his intelligence to the level his father had achieved. And his mother was no better. She had cooked linguistic meals for the three of them when she wasn't working on her own projects independent of Stuart's, but sparse was her existence in Farkle's life. He remembered the majority of his childhood being taken apart by the loyal butlers and handmaids that served Stuart and Jennifer, and he didn't quite hate his parents for leaving him to people he knew now as his caregivers than the erroneous biological distributors of his existence, yet there was a sliver of amenity that spread athwart their relationship when conversation occurred betwixt them.

"I didn't know that you had a connection with Riley's father," said Farkle conversationally. He thought that if he ever wanted to be closer with his father, he'd have to communicate with him without the influence of an outside source keeping him from walking away frustrated and angry. His serene farce kept hold as he continued, "Mr. Matthews is a pretty chill dude."

Stuart's wan smile had lightened a smidgen. The urge to grimace farther than hitherto was pecking obnoxiously at the back of his conscience, but he thought sternly against the action. He needn't disturb his father when Stuart seemed to be enjoying himself and the disconnected conversation he was having with his son.

"Cory always seemed to be a man of calm tranquility, yes," he agreed. "He never said anything offensive to anybody that might've overheard him, and even when he was alone, his demeanor of kindness and wisdom was taken considerably seriously by his own conscience. And his wife. . . ." His father's look appeared forlorn. Nostalgia was affecting him increasingly, and Farkle feared that if he did not snap Stuart out of his past-induced stupor, he might fall into a pitfall of emotional instability. "Topanga is a great person altogether. They are both great people."

"Oh, Mrs. Matthews?" asked Farkle. "Riley's mother? You knew her, too?"

Stuart nodded slowly. "We all went to the same school throughout the years, son," he said sadly. "Topanga and I were the smartest in our class, y'know. She and I always had the best scores in the school, and I regret that our relationship had dissipated into nothingness after graduation." He sighed deeply, rubbing his eyes with the tips of his fingers. A small intone of melancholy fueled his voice. Farkle didn't point it out aloud, yet there was a portion of his own conscience that brought along the emotional response of sympathy for his father.

"I didn't know that you actually had friends, Dad," said Farkle light-heartedly, attempting to rotate the disposition of the conversation from immensely unhappy to a jovilaity that could perhaps last until he eventually excused himself from the table to return to his enlarged room and his ceiling's unending planetarium.

"There's a lot you don't know about your ole dad, son." His smile, which had prior shone with illumination that sparked the outstretched wavers of nostalgia into a flickering pyre that spurt flames from all sides, dimmed.

Farkle frowned. "And there's a lot you don't know about your young son, Dad," he said in return.

"I'd like to know more," he offered haplessly.

"I know." And Farkle heard his own voice lower into the depths of saddened temperament. The caverns wherein they dwelt had swelled to a point where he was confined in its claustrophobic voluminity, and he screamed internally for escape. It never came. He stayed there for long times occasionally, and now he knew that his father had been its source. His sadness about his friendships long lost in the wake of his want for recognition and unrequited love was inherited painfully by his own son. He ponderously wondered if he would be as selfish and zealous as his father was.

He hoped not.

Stuart didn't seem to want to further the conversation much longer. His emotional span had spread not too far, and this appeared to be the extent of his capacity to understand basic emotions under the complex mixtures that Farkle knew from almost all of his close interactions with Riley.

Since he had befriended his three passionate friends, Farkle had grown more accustomed to emotional drive of their internal personalities instead of logical venture of impersonal desires. Their exuding exuberance always led him imperatively to a destination that mattered no less than the journey had, for the end of the venture wasn't as satisfying as the trudge through the mud was. And most of that was fueled by Riley's ceaseless optimism, which had overruled Maya's pessimism, Lucas's skepticism and Farkle's nihilism in a single swipe.

Lately, as he tread through the darkened corridors of the tower, watching the walls and wishing that they weren't so barren, so uninteresting, he returned home with the expectation of emotion; instead he received the despondency he had experienced as a child and through his adolescence. It was nearly his graduation in a year, where his father would not see him in high school but going to a distant college, and his father still had thought it impolite to impede upon his son's life, although he had not found himself associated with reality in general.

Farkle said harshly, "Y'know, I wish I knew you better than I ever will."

Hence, he stood from his seat and the table. He left his food in a cold, untouched state as he gave his father a small dose of his own unemotional attachment. The expression of meager merriment that Stuart held prior promptly dissipated from his thin features. Farkle turned from him and pivoted on his heel to guide himself to his room.

.oOo.

Usually it was silent in here. He enjoyed the isolation sometimes, just wanting to be alone with his thoughts and his planetarium where no one could interrupt him with their overbearing demeanor and ceaseless intonation. He would just sit on his bed, crack open a book and just begin reading until the lights dimmed to nothingness and the only light that spread through the room was the small glow of the spiraling, orbiting planets and unblinking stars that splattered about his domed ceiling. Occasionally, he'd even just go to sleep upright, slumping over his lap with the open book's pages creasing beneath his lanky, thin body.

In a condition of exhaustion, Farkle laid his laptop in its associated position and typed quickly. Maya, Riley and Lucas had joined him into their own little group chat with Lucas's Texan friend Zay.

Although he had texted the group chat with his phone more often than on his laptop, his fingers had a dominance over the keys that spread across the bottom facet of his laptop, and his messages were flung so fast and so deft that they were hard to contain. Riley had even told him that her paragraphs of optimism were beginning to be shadowed by the immense scientific explanations of certain emotions and situations.

He smiled at the thought. Emotions are scientific, he thought. Sometimes they aren't always able to be explained by the equations and chemical properties that went into their development, yet they still are scientific in their barest dispositions.

He gazed at the chat. The glowing green little boxes that were lowered into the bottom right of his screen displayed the messages sent by the two active females. Lucas is probably elsewhere, he thought. It's too late for football practice, and even later for going to the gym. Farkle didn't ponder on this subject for quite long, though, since the messages from the females sent him from his thoughtful torpor and into responding.

Shortstack Volume II: riley hes here

Shortstack Volume II: this boi aint slick leaving us on read

Shortstack Volume II: show yourself coward

purplecatsxx: farkle?

Farkley: It's me, yeah.

purplecatsxx: you finally texted back

Farkley: Sorry about that. Had a little spiel with my father at dinner. I hadn't had my phone at the time. He doesn't like me bringing it to the dinner table because it "desensitizes me from the actual act of eating with him."

Shortstack Volume II: thats wack

Shortstack Volume II: hes pretty bogus i bet

Farkley: It's not too bad. He's usually gone most of the time, and the times where he is home and is able to spend time with me is occasionally ignored in light of what else he could be doing.

purplecatsxx: harsh

purplecatsxx: i'm sorry, farkley

Farkley: You needn't worry yourself with my father, Riley.

purplecatsxx: *hugs* its okay, farkle

purplecatsxx: me and maya got your back

purplecatsxx: right, peaches?

Shortstack Volume II: if anything i have his modesty

purplecatsxx: you're not that modest, maya

Farkley: I agree with the small one, Maya. You scarcely are humble.

Shortstack Volume II: exactly

Shortstack Volume II: farkle isn't too modest himself you know

Shortstack Volume II: tis impossible for me to be humble as it is for him

purplecatsxx: not impossible. he's modest

Shortstack Volume II: lies, riley

Shortstack Volume II: is that why he tries to tell us things we might not understand about chemistry and math and history?

purplecatsxx: he might want to be teaching us, y'know

Farkley: It isn't too bad to expand one's knowledge, Maya. An apothegm claims that one must be acclimated to change if one is to mature and learn.

Shortstack Volume II: there is two words i don't know in those sentences

Shortstack Volume II: get it away from me

amazaying: getting stuff away from you is hard, maya

Shortstack Volume II: ew, it's bucktooth

Shortstack Volume II: that's two unslick people in one group chat

Shortstack Volume II: lucas better not slide the hell up in here and make it three

purplecatsxx: hey, peaches, that's my boyfriend

purplecatsxx: don't say that

Shortstack Volume II: oh? i didnt know that from how much yall love sucking each other's face off

Shortstack Volume II: i wouldve thought that yall were related if i didnt know you personally

purplecatsxx: ... your sarcasm will not affect me, y'know

Farkley: I feel as though that was a Texan insult.

Shortstack Volume II: great job, farkle. at least someone gets it

amazaying: i got it but im texan, so it's not wholly accurate

amazaying: if you said something about guns, then you'd be a little right

amazaying: theres highkey like a couple of dead dudes a week down here

amazaying: "don got shot by betsy the other day"

amazaying: "betsy's dead, too, i heard"

amazaying: "now i am dead"

texanhotty: accurate

purplecatsxx: hey baby

texanhotty: hi, babe

texanhotty: i'm sure that maya ain't causing too much trouble with everyone else

purplecatsxx: you'd be wrong

Shortstack Volume II: the trifecta of unslick bois has been completed, yall

Shortstack Volume II: yall better get yoselves some butter from the store

Shortstack Volume II: it might not be too expensive for farkle but lucas and zay, im not sure you have enough money for it

amazaying: big bet

Shortstack Volume II: bigger bet

purplecatsxx: please don't say biggest bet, babe

texanhotty: i'm sorry, baby, i gotta, i ain't goin down this easily

texanhotty: biggest bet

purplecatsxx: farkle, you're the only sane one here besides me, get them please

Farkley: I'm not getting them, but I got some popcorn. The buttered kind. It's pretty good... You want some?

purplecatsxx: ... gimme some

Shortstack Volume II: these fools

Shortstack Volume II: you took their butter farkle

Shortstack Volume II: they might need it

amazaying: me and lucas don't need any butter, we're already slick

amazaying: ain't that right?

texanhotty: yepyep, we already slick

purplecatsxx: babe, no

Shortstack Volume II: yall be getting swiped left on tinder

amazaying: tell that to izzy, then

amazaying: she swiped right on me and she still hasn't chosen to swipe left on my advances

Farkley: Isadora? You're dating Isadora, Zay?

amazaying: you're exactly right, farkle. been a year and a half since we started

purplecatsxx: they look cute

purplecatsxx: maya agrees, too

Shortstack Volume II: don't tell me what i agree with without my permission

Shortstack Volume II: but she right, she right

Shortstack Volume II: yall cute together

Farkley: Huh. That's interesting.

amazaying: what is, boy genius?

Farkley: Well, she's my ex.

Shortstack Volume II: ooooohhhh

Shortstack Volume II: zay, you better get this boi

Shortstack Volume II: he finna go off on your girl

purplecatsxx: peaches!

Shortstack Volume II: hm? farkle ain't just gon bring up that they dated and say that it was all cool between them

Shortstack Volume II: he not humble

Farkley: I am right here, Maya.

Shortstack Volume II: i know. making sure you hear me anyways

amazaying: brosky, you missed out big time

Farkley: I mean, she and I dated for a month or two because she assumed that because we were the smartest in our grade that it would be most plausible that we get together and develop a relationship to bring little offspring into the world. She was . . . eccentric, to say the least. I am sure you've picked up a little on her idiosyncrasies, Zay, and how cumbersome they might be in embarrassing circumstances.

amazaying: um ... i guess

amazaying: she's a weirdo sometimes, but she's my weirdo, y'know?

Farkley: Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it, man. You have my condolences and blessings.

amazaying: thanks, brotato chip

Farkley: Look, it's pretty late. I'm just going to go to bed. I'll talk to all of you tomorrow at school. G'night, guys.

texanhotty: bye

purplecatsxx: have sweet dreams, farkley

Shortstack Volume II: don't accidentally die in your sleep klutz

amazaying: goodnight, bro

Farkle closed his laptop and set it aside. A decaying smile fell on his face through half of that small conversation with Zay. Truly, he cared still about Isadora and how exactly she was doing, but hearing about one of his connected associates having romantic interactions with her was jarring. There was a miniscule bit of choler that bobbed in his bile like a bouy resting atop the crashing waves of a restless ocean, but he knew it wasn't because he was jealous of Zay having Isadora.

He didn't know much of what the reasoning beyond his anger was, but he knew it had something to do with relationships of some sort. Usually, he had stared at couples at school without care for their personal lives but for their state of intimacy, and occasionally, he found himself envious of them and their relationship. Perhaps this was why he was so frustrated at the moment. Sexual frustration at this age was normal and inconspicuous, orthodox in temperament.

But it wasn't that, he thought suddenly. The epiphany of its origin was churning through this filters of denial and was being discarded because of its disloyal disposition. Surely, he could not have thought it to be the reason of his frustration for it was so selfish and so unorthodox for his respectful ways of living, his unenvious personality being broken by a single person that he subconsciously wanted and desired to press to his lanky body.

Riley. It had only been a few months to where they had been friends, yet he found himself in the depths of a cavern so deep that it was impossible to crawl from, to scale completely without depriving one's self of the essentials required for human life and its prolonged existence on the dying planet called Earth. Quite frustrating, he seemed to want Riley inexorably, for his thoughts and his lips had designated her as the first thing to roll from them as soon as he attempted to articulate words or phrases. Her last name was replaced by his own, and ugh, why'd it have to be her?

Why not Maya? he thought. Maya was a great person that was available to him at all times, unbound by any definition of romantic relationship. She was free and untethered, floating liberally around the populace of the group carelessly. But he knew why it wasn't her. She was too rebellious for him, too pessimistic for someone so nihilistic in demeanor, and she would fuel him with unwanted bonds that he could not fulfill. She would want him to do things he wasn't capable of completing, and it would be embarrassing to think that he could even attempt it at all. It seemed too much work, he thought.

But with Riley, it seemed to come to him in a blur. It wasn't work at all; it was a passion which with his brain could not operate willingly. A supernova had imploded within his chest whenever he looked at her or just merely even thought of her.

The clusters that developed in his chest had glowed with a lustrous ivory. There, deep in the cavernous descents of his soul, cold and damp and dark and unseen by human eyes for so long, an unprecedented blast had burst throughout its voluminity, and now he left it alone with the fear that indulgence would ruin their friendship, one not even a few months in its infancy.

Listlessly, he looked down at his closed laptop. It mocked him, the luminous semicircle peering out to a visage distant and far. Riley was probably still active, he knew. Late at night, she'd avoid the badgering of her own father to peruse the Internet as she so wished, indulging in her fair share of Netflix shows and movies, and wouldn't be slumbering until at least three in the morning when her eyes could no longer stay open and her brain could not operate in its exhaustion.

He thought of flipping open the laptop and messaging her. But this vehement notion passed in its incredulity. He would not. It wasn't ethical to keep thinking these unjustifiable desires whilst his best friends had the times of their lives together. He didn't have any right to impede upon their relationship, especially when his jealousy was proceeding into inconceivable territory.

Yet . . . he could not go to sleep with his head pounding with notions of intense emotion. He had, with a gesticulation so deft it took no longer than a second to fully complete, pulled his laptop up into his lap, flipped it open and navigated through the screens glowing their lustrous gaze upon his pale face to where he could see the individual messages he and Riley shared in the last few weeks. There was a plethora of them available for his viewing, broadening in the last few days where they had steadily exchanged messages throughout the night until Riley had eventually fallen asleep, yet he cared not for them at the moment; instead, he focused more on the words he was typing underneath them.

He reviewed the message after having written it down and revised it to attenuate its truest purpose:

farkle_minkus: I'm sorry for bothering you, Pluto, but I just needed to provide you with a small smidgen of information that I wish to be cleared from my conscience. Its ceaseless persistence leads to evident frustration and aggravation, and clearly, I must speak on it. I've had a few problems with my emotions lately and how to control them, and I was hoping that maybe you could attempt to help me with them. You're always the crux of my understanding of these complex and convoluted thoughts and notions, so I wish to concede with you. Perhaps tomorrow, you could come to my house and converse? It would be greatly appreciated, Pluto. Thanks in advance if you cannot. And if you can, that's better.

He thought it to be mediocre at best. But he'd said what he needed to say, and it was right there for her, so he needn't have any type of issue with its existence. His hands tremulous in their descent, he sent the message with a tap of a black key, and he closed the monitor fast, too fast. His conscience was a bit strange in its muddled disposition, but it didn't slam noisily against the sides of his head as it had hitherto. For this, he was delighted about. It meant that his migraine would not persist so much that he couldn't obtain sleep.

He laid down, a faint smile athwart his features. Then his blue eyes closed, and the last thing to come to his mind before he finally ventured into the land of dreams and nightmares associated with slumber was Riley's smiling, round face coming innocuously towards his.


	5. hypodermic

"There can't be any way that you actually live here."

Farkle had brought Riley downtown to present her his accommodations. She had agreed to meet him there after school to talk about things they couldn't in front of their friends - he insisted so much that she presumed it was something so intense and personal that her knowledge was the only one that would ever coincide with his own - and now that she waited for the elevator in the lobby with Farkle at her side, she continued to deny the fact he lived in the towering levels that spread to the sky overhead.

He gave her a smile. "There is a way I can live here," he told her.

The elevator dinged as the shaft planted to ground level. The doors slid apart and Farkle led Riley in.

"It's a huge thing," she said, and leaned against the back of the elevator's interior. Her back rested easily against the stainless steel pole that stretched across the rear, winding her fingers around its girth and holding tight. "And it looks. . . ."

"Impressive?" asked Farkle. He tapped a button on the right side the elevator's front. It glowed a dim white, and it shuddered a small tad, stirred for a moment before it started its vertical venture upward. "Spectacular? Inconceivable?"

"Yes, all of those things," she agreed aimlessly. Her far stare was fixated on his features, the creases that his smile caused his face to intentionally conceive. "I thought Maya was joking around when she was telling me that you were rich and stuff."

"I'm an affluent heir due to my father," he confessed. The sour tinge in his voice conveyed clearly to Riley his annoyance about it. "I do not like the infamy that comes along with the prideful influence my father's name has on my life."

"You don't like it? The rich life?" she asked.

He shook his head. "It's cumbersome," he said sharply. "Dad would rather me just keep myself impersonal to prevent anybody becoming interested in the inherited money that comes along with my existence." He gave her a look of discomfort. "Did you think that I liked my life outside school?"

Noticing she was being accused, she shook her head instinctively. "No, of course not. I didn't know."

He sighed, then shrugged. "I know," he conceded modestly. "But with my father becoming increasingly obsessed with his work and my mother inherently disposing herself of the life of a loving parent for a better business opportunity in other states and even countries, it's not the ideal living conditions for a teenager."

Riley, her face one of sadness and melancholy, slowly came forward and laced her arms around his waist, lying her head upon his chest as she squeezed him close to her body. Her breath was hot against his chest, and the warmth spread throughout him like a heatwave blasting from a small mechanical orifice. "I'm sorry, Farkley," she said apologetically. Her hold on him tightened as the glowing red numbers above the two sliding doors inclined to the double-digits.

He shared the embrace. His long arms and skinny fingers laden her shoulders and the barren base of her neck. His cold fingers could feel the border that, underneath the innate folds of her long, gleaming chestnut hair, separated her smooth, unhindered skin and the cumbersome, tight fabric of her bright yellow blouse. If she had felt the frigidity of his touch, she gave no indication that it affected her.

"Thank you, Pluto," he whispered in a low gruff. Inhaling the sweet smell of vanilla from her dark auburn locks, he swore that he could be lost in them without wasting any time at all. "I appreciate it," he added arbitrarily.

Behind him, the doors leading into his living space had spread open to reveal the blinding light that sifted through the windows and draped the expensive furniture in a shroud of illumination. His sunshine had already been closed between his arms, so when her arms had unwound from his waist and she pivoted to turn gratefully to the amazing spectacle beneath them, he groaned lowly in disappointment. Hence, he drowsily trailed his feet to follow behind her skipping demeanor. She pressed against the large glass window and peered down at the small New Yorkers that walked the streets, appearing to be ants making their way through the ranks and corridors of a complex ant hill.

"Wow," she said. She looked back at Farkle with a sparkling smile that shot through his chest and melted his insides. "This is awesome. Do you just stand here and look down at all of them?"

"That would be patronizing," he said. Coming from behind her, he looked over her shoulder to examine the same streets she peered at herself. "I would do it much more if it weren't."

"You can see the homeless," she mentioned, pointing down to a small portion of the street occupied by miniscule persons that were clothed in mismatched outfits and carried enlarged bags to hold all their supplies and belongings. "Dad and I like going out and helping them out on the weekends. It's fun. You can hear them tell stories about their life on the streets. Some of them even have little families of their own. It's sad, yet satisfying to know that you've helped them for just another day. Eases the conscience." She threw him a hopeful look over her shoulder. "Why don't you give some of your money to them? You should help them out if you don't like your money so much."

Farkle paled at the thought of interacting with those slobs. Although he had sympathized with them and their struggle, he still presumed that they were immensely untidy and unethical within social interactions as much as he, and his ineptitude needn't draw more attention to itself any more than it already had.

It's not what I actually want to do with my spare time, y'know, he thought, but said instead, "That would be great." There was a dash of inconvenience dipped into his intonation, and he developed a feeling that Riley was able to comprehend his distaste and amenity towards those indecent human beings that, for their own life, could not bring it upon themselves to straighten up and begin their lives anew without the cumbersome thoughts of an old and distant past.

But thankfully, Riley hadn't caught on with his words, finding them no more offensive than she otherwise would. She simply just stared down at them with interested eyes and waved down as though the miniscule persons could see her gleaming smile from all the way in the Minkus Tower. She even had called a few names out, although he was sure that those designations weren't classified for the beings of indecency that plagued the streets beneath him. They sure would appreciate it if they could hear her, he thought.

"Oh, I didn't know that you were bringing your friend over, Farkle."

Farkle, who was only mere inches away from Riley, had leapt away from her once his comprehended the sound of his father's intonation. Quickly turning around and looking straight at the man with an intense gaze that preceded his nonchalance, he settled his qualms within his bile before speaking up.

"Dad, I believe I can take whomever I wish into the house," he said slowly, deliberately.

Stuart solemnly nodded. "And so you can," he said, his voice a low ambience that reverberated carelessly through the tense atmosphere. His sharp breaths intended to keep himself stabilized, it seemed, yet it only broiled the choler that settled deep within him. His fiery, blue-eyed gaze clashed with Farkle's. "Wouldn't it have been better to introduce me to her first before you brought her around here, though? I say, it must be quite awkward sauntering around without the proper knowledge of who runs this place, y'know." Ignoring Farkle and his aghast face, he subsequently looked over at Riley, whose shocked and surprised expression rivaled her friend's in credulity. "My name is Stuart, ma'am," he said to her, "but you can call me Minkus, as almost everyone else does. Who are you?"

The silent spell that abound her had been lifted at the raise of Stuart's eyebrows, and she said anxiously, "R-Riley Matthews, sir. It's nice to meet you. Sir."

Stuart's face, solemn and somber hitherto, had brightened significantly as he stumbled forward to meet the small teenager. Standing a foot away from the brunette, he gleamed. His calloused hands pressed against the soft fabric of her blouse as she was gripped by her shoulders. Forced to look into the eyes of a weary, wizen man deprived of sleep and care and love, she winced. "A Matthews, you say?" he asked.

She gulped, a small lump passing through her throat, and nodded. Her usually bright brown eyes were abound by the immense uneasiness filled in the gaps and crooks within the businessman's almost-empty irises. Meanwhile, Farkle stood by her, drawing nearer and nearer as the seconds lengthened into unbearable silence.

The shared moment passed when Stuart had turned to Farkle. Then: "She is quite gorgeous, son. You have really struck out with this one, I must say."

Farkle flushed. His thoughts, a blur, evaded his comprehension as he took sight of the perplexed and embarrassed expression that spread so adorably across her features. Giving her an oblong glance of reassurance, he stepped forward to seperate the two from each other. "Let's get going, Riley," he said sharply to the young woman. "We have a project for school we have to work on, don't we?"

And she turned her head so fast that he was mildly afraid she were going to snap her neck if she was just a smidgen more deft. Her eyes gave way to his own, fearful and affright, and she said quickly, "What project?"

"The Chemistry one," he said slowly. His flicking gaze held his father's for just a moment, and this conspicuous movement of his irises might've caused him to regret saying a word to her at all. Oh gods, he thought frightfully. Please don't question me again, Pluto.

But she got it, thankfully. "Oh . . . the one with the elements and stuff," she mentioned anxiously. Smiling, she said a farewell to Stuart as Farkle grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her away from the man.

The cold corridor that led into his room was frigid, but Farkle thought it better than watching his father scrutinize him for something he hadn't done at all. He refused to turn over his shoulder to look at the man and his blue-eyed gaze follow after his son, and it was good that he hadn't. If he even dared, he would perhaps be abound by the anger and choler which flowed so easily through is veins. His aggravation scarcely abated from its heights after his calm yet infuriating arguments with his father, and they always returned from their hiding after he encountered someone who asked him so pleasantly about his condition.

But the mere, warm touch of Riley smooth, soft skin poured in him a true serenity that he thought rare and sparse within his own bile. Truly, there had been a deficient of happiness and mirth that roiled in him, and he'd dealt with it, yet not without melancholy and yearn for something more, something merry and jocular. And now that Riley had connected herself to him (or he had forced himself upon her in a standard method of forcefulness), his thoughts were repose, and they floated all about in the skies of cheerful rainbows instead of the enormous rainclouds that hovered ceaselessly above his head.

He turned to look at her when they came to his door. She was smiling nervously at him, and her dimples, placed on her rosy cheeks in an adorable position, had broadened her slight amusement a smidgen. But her eyes, brown and wide, showed her concern. "Are you all right?" she asked quietly.

And Farkle said sardonically, as an instantaneous, automatic response: "I'm never all right."

Riley's smile was embittered, and it slowly turned downward to express a frown. "Why not?" she inquired curiously.

"That man right there is the most part of my unwell-being, really," replied Farkle. "He always speaks in querulous statements that're always placed on me for some odd reason, and never does he apologize for his behavior, and it's so annoying because it bites away at my soul and makes me feel so much worse about my existence than it should. His jabs are so subtle, and they shouldn't be noticeable, but never does he think that I can see through his barren facades and their malignant connotations."

"Oh no," she said softly. Her wide brown eyes still looked up at him, and now they were glistening. Small tears had drifted at the edges of her irises, and if she left them to fall, they'd take their journey down her red cheeks.

And Farkle didn't want that, so he said, taking her in his arms and humming a few choice words of soothing, "Don't cry, Riley. It's not as bad as I may make it out to be, and it's really nothing to get emotional about. Please."

"He shouldn't treat his own son like he's just a product to be observed," she said. Her voice was choked and muffled as she pressed her face easily into the fabric of his Periodic Table shirt, and he cursed himself, for he made inadvertently made her cry, and this was all his fault. She continued, "You're so much better than he really makes you out to be. He thinks that a sense of accomplishment comes along when you bring someone over, especially someone with my last name, when he should be more focused on how you're doing at school, how your personal life has been or even just making sure that you don't need medical help. He's heartless. He doesn't deserve a son like you, Farkle. He just doesn't." Then the sobs had abound her back, and she craned forward to release them, crying, sobbing loudly.

Farkle sighed. He laid his chin on her crown, keeping her there as she soaked his shirt. He whispered serene words as he spoke in that calm intonation of his, the baritone of his voice gentle and tranquil in the depths of her sadness.

Then, when he found it slightly uncomfortable in the corridor, a place he could be observed by his father from the other side of the hallway, he asked, "Do you want to come into my bedroom, Pluto?"

Riley lifted her head. Registering his words, she slowly nodded her head. "Yeah, that'd be cool," she sniffled.

Seconds later, they had taken refuge in the voluminous confines of his bedroom. Its ceiling was domed so that he could see the planetarium in its fullest extent, and its height stretched so far up that it would take at least three of him to even scrap its closest edge. But he was content with just staring up at it at nights when he inflicted by bouts of insomnia that seemed to never leave him until the sun rose over the skyscraper-laden horizon and entered the sky alongside a few remnants of stars.

Underneath it sat his queen-sized bed, and as soon as the saddened Riley saw its comfortable expanse, she sauntered sadly to it and flopped onto it face-first. Usually, at night, he'd sit alone in it with his one blanket and pillow. During this time, he'd try hard to not think about the creeping loneliness that accompanied his thoughts whenever he sat in its empty expanse. Occasionally, there was a fleeting thought that crossed his mind that he might bring a female classmate to rest beside, but whenever he had attempted to entertain the notion lately, there'd always be the visage of Riley in the place of those hormonal fantasies. Those nights had left him as sleepless as the dark days when he was stricken with insomnia.

If he'd let his thoughts wander, he might go on with his fantasies as she laid upon his bed with her ass facing him, but he shook his head.

No, he told himself, his internal intonation chiding and chastising. You can't think those kind of things. Don't you know that she has a boyfriend? It's taboo, and you can't do it.

But what if you could? he asked himself in return. It would be so easy to establish myself as a lover instead of Lucas if I told her how I might feel, and perhaps she'd come to me and we'd be happy.

He shook his head. It wouldn't be that easy, of course. There were variables which he could not count, for they were unknowable. The unknown was a maddening thing. It made you wait, and if you hadn't the patience, you'd crumble underneath the cumbersome abhorrence of your own selfish desire, or if you'd had too much, you'd go mad waiting and waiting forever for something that would never be yours to hold close and keep. Both possibilities at their extremes were dangerous in principle, but at the central point where the two spectrums met, and their edges collided in a massive combination, the worse came to fruition.

The impatience would gnaw at your better judgment but you'd have nothing else to do but keep waiting, and you'd let go at the wrong moment, and there goes your chance of ever feeling happiness with that one person. Patience was prolonged suicide, but eventually, it'd come up behind you, and there it would strike. You'd fall like you had done before, and so long ago, you'd know exactly what was happening.

Riley flipped herself over, and the sight of the back of her jeans dissipated into the folds of his bed. There were dry tears that were evident upon her cute features, but she left them there as she momentarily smiled at him. The grin was beaming with lustrous vehemence; it soaked in all his attentiveness. "I'm still so sorry, Farkle, that your father has to treat you like that," she said. "You don't deserve anything like him as a father, y'know, and he can't force you to stay here for much long."

He winced at that. Stuart Minkus was so vehement about having his son follow after him in the political aspects of his business that he hadn't thought about Farkle's aspirations to become an astrophysicist. And this utterance of freedom and liberation from Riley only furthered the notion that his father would be disappointed. Although he truly despised and distasted his father's own ideals and morality towards him, he found it untoward to disappoint his father, for it would probably demolish his own self-conscious and bring about another development of emotional fortitude. He needn't more of that, really, as his defenses had already rose to the heights of the skyscrapers he saw at the illuminated edges of the blazing horizon, and were as strong as pure, concentrated, compacted diamond.

He gulped, and said, "He might force me here for longer than either of us truly anticipate."

"What?" she asked incredulously. "He can't do that. That's against the law. Once you're eighteen, you can move, and you'll have your own life to live instead of the one in his shadow."

He nodded politely. "Yes," he said, "that's true, but it wouldn't be physical encampment." Then, seeing her confusion spreading across her features, he decided to elaborate: "It'd be a guilt thing. He'd tell me that he thought that I would go with him in the family business, and when I tell him that he doesn't know what I want or where I want to go in this life, he'd tell me that his father had told him the same thing, and he'd fib to say that his father had been told by his father that they'd follow in the same footsteps. It wouldn't ebb until he gets his way by convincing me to get me in the family business to act as a ruthless man willing to do anything just to keep himself at the top."

He sat to her right, rubbing his eyes with his index fingers, then continued, "He'll keep me there with him, and he'd give me presents trying to placate me. It's not okay, but he's used to people doing his bidding. He's a man of business, and along with the suit he adorns comes the disposition of a revolutionary that wants to overturn the dictator by taking over people and giving into the corruption." He took a breath, his voice shaking as he grew timorous. "That's probably why he's always putting me down, really. He wants me to be complacent so that he can control me and boss me around like I'm nothing to him but a lowly servant. But I don't accept that, and he gets angry, but never does he show any of it, because a businessman is not supposed to show any emotion for the fear of revealing the thoughts spinning in his head. And I get angry because I keep my emotions in for long unless they're slumbering in the back of my head. The anger just comes out, and it gets me heated, and the rage is released."

Riley placed her hand on his shoulder. He was trembling, and the trifle gesticulation engendered a tremulous disposition amid her fingers. "And that's the only way your emotions come out?" she queried quietly.

He nodded solemnly. "Seldom do I feel emotions towards other people in the affectionate sense. Dad's made sure of that. He isolated me from that at a young age, telling me that people are dangerous for my intellect, and that they'd try to manipulate me for their own selfish wants and desires. Platonic or romantic, never do they appear."

"Until you met us," she said.

"Yeah, you could say that. Maya was a good introduction to the ways of socializing, and even through my excursions with people like Hemwick and Wallowitz, it seems that my retorts are enough for her and you, too."

"You are a clever boy," agreed Riley. Having him so near, she had decided to rest her head against the broadened expanse of his shoulder. She relaxed there for a moment, feeling him tense, and said, "Your father kind of added to that, but I guess that that's his only good quality."

Farkle smiled. "Mhm," he hummed.

They sat like that for a moment, comfortable in each other's presence as the seconds flickered forward and time continued its ceaseless route across space. Farkle dared to sling his arm over her own shoulder, and this had worked better than anticipated, for Riley smiled gleefully in the silence and looked up at him with a content eye as she snuggled closer to him. The warmness they shared was heating him to a boiling point, and he was sure that his face was on the verge of evaporating under the tense conditions placed upon him by the beautiful girl beneath his wing.

Then Riley broke the pleasant silence, looking him in the eyes with a widened gaze: "Did you want to talk about that one thing?"

And Farkle internally slapped himself for forgetting such an important part of Riley's current presence here with him.

He had asked her here . . . because he wanted to confess to her. He learned so much from her in the last few weeks of their friendship, and he inexorably felt an attraction to her that engendered a hammering in the center of his chest, where his heart beat hard, uncontrollably against his ribcage and wept blood at every strike of bone on flesh. Denial was far from his grasp now. It dissipated as soon as he knew that these unwelcome emotions became naturally associated with the brunette with eyes that looked like melting chocolate, sweet and gooey and hot beyond consideration.

He loved her. And if he was exposed to her even more than lately, where she was free from the protective clutches of Lucas, then he assumed that, in the coming months, or even weeks, he would be in love with her, irrevocably and irresistibly. He doubted none of it.

But was it too early to say something about it?

He was affright that there would be unreciprocated feelings. But a little notion at the rear of this thought mentioned to him that a shot untaken would never hit its target.

What would be the repercussions of his confession, however? It would obliterate their friendship. Moreover, she would perhaps cease communication with him. And the worst of the consequences came in the manifestation of Lucas Friar, the entire football team flanking him, asking him exactly what he thought he was doing, attempting a romantic future with Riley whilst she was at the blonde's hip day in, day out.

He sighed and said nothing in reply.

Riley asked, "Didn't you say something about emotions and that you needed my help with them?"

"Yes, I did." He wiped unconsciously beneath his nose. "Uh. . . . Okay. You sure you're not going to judge me for anything I say?"

Nonplussed, she said, "Of course I won't, Farkle. Why would I?"

He shrugged. "Just the anxiety talking, I guess."

"Well, I promise to you that I won't say anything offensive or jugemental to you because of something you say, all right?"

He smiled wryly. Cool, he thought. Maybe this won't be as painful as I thought it would be. Then: "Okay. A few weeks ago - or maybe even before then, I don't know - I started to gain an interest in someone."

Riley's eyes surreptitiously gleamed. "Romantic interest?" she queried.

"Yep. I'll keep their name disclosed for now, but if you need further information that might help you help me, then just say it." She nodded. He continued, "Well, she just found herself in my mind after she and I started talking to each other a little bit. We share a lot of interests, we like a lot of the same stuff. It's great whenever I'm able to talk to her, or anything of that nature, y'know? Anyways, she always knows what to say whenever I'm under some sort of spell associated with anxiety and melancholy, and stuff like that, so she's a part of my emotional life as well as my personal life. And I think I'm catching feelings, but I don't know."

Riley considered. "Do you see her as a friend, or would you like to be something more?"

"I have to see her as a friend, no matter how much I want to be something more."

"Why can't you be something more?" she asked curiously.

Because you have a bloody boyfriend, he thought, but didn't say; instead, he said patiently, "She's interested in someone else."

"Oh," breathed Riley sadly. Her eyebrows wrinkled together; her eyes narrowed at him. "But how is that stopping you?"

Farkle absently noticed how exactly alluding to the girl resting right beside him was beginning to sound eerie and queer. Yet he continued anyways, unwillingly to speak openly about his feelings whilst exposing that they were about Riley: "Well, I can barely speak to her because she's always kissing up on her boyfriend and attending multitudes of dates and outgoings with him. I find it slightly irritating, but I have to keep myself indifferent to the fact, for neither party knows about my emotions. In fact, this is the first time I've even said anything about it to anybody."

Riley smiled. "Awh, Farkle. Am I really that special to you?" she asked in a pleasant intonation.

Was she . . . _was she goading him?_ She had to be. There was no way that she knew it was her. But . . . he underestimated her before, and he was aghast hitherto.

However, despite this, he blurted out, "Of course, Riley."

And her smile widened.

"Back on topic," he said quickly, garnering the attention of the brunette beneath his arm, "she is unreachable, but I want her badly. I know we haven't known each other for long, yet there is an urge to hold her close to me and tell her how I feel, despite all restrictions, abandoning all of it for the exposure of my feelings." He exhaled a shaky breath. "But I don't know how she'll react. I have no idea how she feels about me, or if she actually wants to be the things I want us to be. Its uncertainty is feeding away at my soul, and my mind, too, and I really don't know how to go about this all without risking my friendship with her."

Riley scrunched together her nose, bringing it upward in an adorable manner. He smiled unconsciously at the sight as she thought. "You want to hear what I think you should do, Farkley?"

"Of course, Pluto. Otherwise, I would've texted Maya and asked her to come up here with me to talk about this. She might've even slapped my father for talking to me the way he did, knowing her."

She giggled. "That's true. And you can't say anything to interject till I say all I need to say, okay?"

He nodded.

"If you feel the way you do," she said, keeping her gaze on him, steady, immobile, "I just suggest telling her right whenever it's possible to do so. You might love her like the way she wants to be loved, or she might be willing to let you love platonically. But even if you tell her, you'll be free of the agony that crawls through you. It's obviously tearing you apart, making you suffer every time that you see the two together, and it's not okay. They shouldn't be treating you like that, even if it's accidental. And if she does reciprocate your feelings, make sure she has time to end it with her boyfriend."

"But what if I can't wait?" asked Farkle suddenly.

Instantaneously, he regretted interrupting her, for she stared at him sternly, her lips tight and pursed. When she spoke, her words were tense. "You're going to have to, Farkle. I don't think that she wants to cheat on her boyfriend even if she secretly harbors feelings for you, especially if she's tipping and nervous about her relationship in general. It's not okay, doing any of that. It's lying and deceit, and it's less than all right. In fact, it's all wrong."

He shook strenuously. The confession was right on the tip of his tongue, and he was ready to tell her, just give her all the information that he had been keeping to himself in the last few weeks, the information that gnawed uneasily at his heart, that fed on his melancholy, which endowed in the wake of his agony and pain as he watched Riley and Lucas kiss so openly. Yet he failed to say anything in response, knowing that she wasn't finished with her advice, and listened carefully as she continued with a strained voice, keeping much of wanted emotion devoid from the artificial intonation.

"But if she doesn't feel the same way, then it's okay. You'll be fine, I'm sure. Even if it doesn't feel like you're going to be fine, or if you believe that the options of life are gone, it will be okay, and soon, you'll find another somebody to love. There is no shortage of people to love, no matter how much it feels, and the only way to accept it is to believe it. Trust me, Farkle, I know. It took me three years, almost four, to get with Lucas, and even now, it's hard for me to think of someone else if he decides to leave me." Then, protectively: "I know he won't, though."

Through the window, the illumination of the rising sun over yonder had propagated the small shadows of her face. Reflected merely by the darkness of her downcast expression, the evidence of her worry splayed so obviously on the edifices of her face.

And Farkle noticed this. He said, "You don't really know that, do you? You're worried that when Lucas and you end, you won't find another thereafter."

She shook her head. "You don't know that. And besides, he won't leave me. He loves me."

"And when he doesn't?" asked Farkle.

"What about you, Farkle?" she countered, attempting to alternate the subject. "You have that one girl that you like."

"And she's worrying about how exactly she might fare when her boyfriend eventually breaks up with her for someone else," he blurted. And in this moment, with her beneath him, clutching tightly to her protectively, he wasn't affright anymore. His mind wasn't wrought with the thoughts of rejection now, but of jocular disposition.

Riley looked up at him. Her eyes were wide. "What?" she asked suddenly.

Not scared anymore, he said, "Yep. The girl that I like? It's you. And I know that you said that I shouldn't try anything till she's still dating her boyfriend, but right now, you look a little smidgen overwhelmed by everything. I don't want to throw you off the edge of the cliff, but if you want . . . I can."

She just stared at him. She said nothing.

And maybe he was a little scared. Now she was just looking up at him as though she had seen a god in person, and was simply relishing in the sight, the reality of the situation in front of her. His heart hammered - he was sure she could hear it. Perhaps he let her down, and she wanted to leave as soon as possible. That was plausible. And if it was true? Then he'd probably just rest in his bed and offer himself the thoughts of what could be.

"Well?"

Riley's aglow face still looked up surreptitiously. Then it suddenly moved up to his, and their lips encapsulated one another, and now her hands were in his hair, her arms wound around his neck, and she ravished herself in his taste whilst he did hers, leaving the thoughts of uncertainty behind him, the fear of consequence abandoned in the wake of Riley's sudden wish to indulge herself in the attractive teenager.

 _Well, today's been pretty eventful,_ he thought as he brought Riley round and placed her resolutely on his lap, where she was more accessible to the crevices of his face.


	6. obfuscated

He was used to living in the confines of obscurity, to where he wasn't noticed by those plebeians which roamed the corridors of high school with glossy eyes and unthinking brains, but at the moment, being treated as though his existence had disappeared overnight was infuriating. Riley, the perpetrator of such gesticulations, avoided him, her eyes downcast as they passed each other in the halls, her head turned away as he sat at the lunch table with Lucas and Maya and administered his voice in small talk of sorts trifling and insignificant. And the others had noticed, watching as the dance betwixt Riley and Farkle grew more complex and complicated, their steps escalating, their movements shrewd and strategic, but neither of them had said a word about the fact that their friends had begun something they couldn't stop.

For this, Farkle was thankful. He loathed this intricate song and dance Riley and him were completing in obligation to prevent the information shared between them from accidentally being exposed to the public, yet this distaste, altogether developed the crevices of his mind, right there in the depths of his thoughts where his known animosity for his father dwelt, did not further itself to his vision of Riley. Still, even if she was always turned away from him, averting herself so that she didn't look directly at him in public, she wad adorable. His sight of those molten brown eyes he was so used to wasn't provided to him here in the presence of their friends, but the week would spurn on, and sometime during that time, he'd get to see them again right there in front of him as he gripped her waist and her arms ringed around his neck in a forbidden intimacy both knew was wrong but could not be avoided.

Today was uneventful, really, until Maya dragged the boy from the hallway and into the Art classroom without a word spoken between either party. He hadn't questioned her motives externally, but the thoughts that toiled in his mind spun wildly. He might've interposed her movements, but by the time that his notions had returned to their initial intellect, she plopped him on a stool, then took the one that sat opposite him. Her icy blue eyes, iridescent with knowledge of the unknown, bore right into his as she positioned her elbows onto the table resting in front of them and folding her hands together. Currently, she appeared to hold an eerie semblance to the school therapist he visited weekly, and that wasn't someone who he wished to think about at the moment.

She breathed, an expression serious and objective on her face. "Okay," she said devilishly. "Farkle, it's time for your little mouth to spill the information you're keeping from us." She held up a finger as he opened his mouth to object. "Don't deny the fact that something has been happening between Riley and you. There is obviously something that's occurring, and I sick and tired of being between y'all as you avoid each other like you have diseases or something. This didn't happen two weeks ago, so something had to have happened between then and now."

Farkle sighed. "Maya, there hasn't been anything going on," he lied. "You've been misinterpreting the actions between us, and there's nothing to be revealed from the connotations that you willfully speak of."

She gaped. "You've got to be kidding me," she told him. "Lucas even has noticed, genius. And Ranger Rick is an oblivious bastard that notices nothing unless it makes guttural noises or slavers him with kisses that make him go all gooey and shit. He and I talked about it amongst each other."

"And I think that the conclusions that you've derived from those uninformed conversations are untoward," said Farkle smoothly. But there slowly was a timorous quality adorned by his voice. He couldn't reveal himself to Maya, who herself knew of stubbornness and tenacity for she employed it easily within most of her passionate projects and personal life.

And unfortunately, at least for him at the moment, the latter was the irreversible truth.

She said, "Lucas and I are not 'untoward' or whatever. You and Riley have got to get yourselves together. I mean, she hasn't told me what has been going on with you, so that brings up red flags almost instantly, y'know. She can tell me anything, and right now, She refuses to do so. And you, too. You're denying everything I say."

He shrugged. "Well, it's because what you're saying is incorrect. I'm an apostle for the truth, and I speak from my heart: between Riley and I, nothing has occurred."

Maya thought for a few moments, her face scrunched as deep notions brewed in her brain. Farkle assumed that she was done with the conversation, and he was surprised that she was continuing further as he opened his backpack and splayed his utensils against the wooden table. "So if you and Riley are cool," she provided, "then you can go up to her and talk to her without being awkward or confused to who you're speaking to? Y'know, like you aren't complete, love-struck strangers that can't reveal their feelings to each other?"

Farkle looked up and around as his face had garnered an uncanny resemblance to a ripe tomato. Then, in a tight whisper: "Don't say that kind of stuff in public, Maya. You might make other people think that Riley and I are having something together by speaking like that."

"And why would that be such a bad thing?" she asked cleanly. And there was a gleam in her eye that told Farkle she had gotten the information from him that she needed to confirm her odd, unjustified suspicions.

"She has Lucas, y'know, and she's a magnitude more loyal than most of the females here in the school. Haven't they been dating for a couple of months?"

"Yep."

"Then you see my point. They have an established relationship."

And Maya, whose smile had broadened considerably in the duration of their conversation, had the tense audacity to snort so willingly. Then a series of quick chortles had proceeded to escape her lips. At the end of this sudden excursion, she said breathlessly, "You would classify that as an established relationship?"

Farkle gulped. "I mean, I guess, but -"

"Farkle, all they do with their time alone is either make out or talk about menial things that don't even matter. A relationship so fickle as theirs is on the cusp of being obliterated by the merest thought of indecency on either party. It's a relationship based purely on the interactions of two hormonal teenagers finding themselves stuck in an infinite loop to where the chance to escape doesn't appear to them unless the planets align and the stars fall down from the sky to land on the Earth. Ranger Rick and Riles ain't really emotional with each other more than they are attracted to their looks. Riley may be very emotional to everyone that will allow it, but Lucas is barely capable of thinking in terms of anything besides his animals back home and his own good-lookin face."

Farkle, dumbfounded, asked, "Oh?"

"Yes, oh. Have you seen him say I love you to her without having to think for a few moments before responding?"

Farkle shook his head.

"Have you heard of them going on dates or talking about how they feel about each other in our presences?"

He shook his head again.

"And, finally, have you thought that their relationship, as cute as it is, and as externally functional it might seem, doesn't have much of a foundation to establish its cables into the ground? That it doesn't seem to be connected from falling over? That it leaves for more to be desired?"

And Farkle nodded somberly.

"So you see my point."

"Yeah."

"Then what is it?"

"That the bond between both Lucas and Riley is fragile and one teensy, tiny bend or infraction would burst them apart like two of the same magnetic poles. Or that their chemical makeup was imbalanced in the first place, and that a variable undesirable had been implemented within the equation, leading to their derisive bond. Or -"

"You got it all ready, Farkle," interjected Maya, preventing the boy from continuing to make allegories for their easily breakable relationship. She took a deep breath. "Now that you have this information within the confines of your large, oversized head, what are you hiding? What's the situation between you and Riley?"

Farkle smiled wryly.

And Miss Keller said loud enough so that the two of them could hear, "If Mr. Minkus and Maya could stop gossiping about their fellow classmates, I suppose that class can begin and we can start our project."

Both of them looked sheepishly at Miss Keller as the students faced them with amused smiles, and they both apologized, the tenacity displayed earlier dissipating quite quickly beneath the perpetual gaze of their teacher.

Miss Keller fed them with useless information about how shading whilst painting was strictly important, for the implications upon the canvas that prevented one from removing an error were stronger than if one was to use a pencil to sketch and draw their artwork. Farkle tuned out the lesson, defocusing himself and returning to a common background of stars and quasars and supernovae and black holes that encapsulated EXO planets and heliocentric solar systems and Pluto, of course, and as he came to, his torpor falling slightly and its masquerade disappearing accordingly, he smacked his lips together and only paid attention to the fact that Maya perked her ears upward to hear Miss Keller better than before. The amusing visage had given him the thought of an intent canine watching his owner as he held a bright, round, unchewed tennis ball between his fingers, anticipating the toss, waiting for the launch.

He'd fail to mention this later, yet it was no harm, hence no loss.

The interlude finally finished once Miss Keller ordered for everyone to come forward and grab a poster-sized sheaf to do an archromatic portrait of a selected partner, and Farkle was amazed at the very swiftness exhibited by the small blonde as she zoomed through the interconnected web of students yearning for their paper and returned just as fast with two sheets tucked beneath her arm. Her breaths were short and cut-off, and he waited till she stopped her incessant heaving to retrieve his sheet from her.

"So," she said, fiddling with a small piece of lead filament manifested from the depths of her black backpack, "you never answered my question."

"I never noticed," he said in return, nonchalantly.

She threw him a jeering look. "You did," she retorted. "You just didn't choose to respond."

"Perhaps there was a reason why I didn't say anything. You think of that, hm?"

"I did. But as you said before, there would be no reason to keep anything to yourself if you weren't doing anything incriminating."

"You twist my words, woman," quipped Farkle.

"Because you are keeping something from me, and I want to know why you are keeping it from me."

"Maybe I'm keeping it from everyone because it is mine and only mine."

"Is that how you feel about Riles?"

And Farkle coughed on his own spittle. Hacking and slamming his hand against his chest in a vain attempt to try to prevent his lungs from constraining him too tightly, he looked up at her with pleading eyes. Hers peered back, their diamond-like disposition dreadfully depositing the fearful notion that she did indeed know his secret, if only just a little bit of it.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," spluttered Farkle in a timorous voice.

"You can't fool me, y'know. I see the way you look longingly at Riley. It's as if you want to keep her away from Lucas and give her something of your own remedy."

Quick, Minkus, think, he chastised himself. The ramparts of his mind attempted to locate information tucked deep into its confines. Then, an epiphany blew apart one of the bluffs that prevented its access through, and he said suddenly, "And you don't think the same way about Lucas?"

Maya's gasp was enough of an answer for him. But she continued anyways, "You don't know anything about what's going on between Ranger Rick and I, Farkle Bartholomew Minkus. Don't you dare twist this on me without any examples."

"But I have lots of examples." He was merely bluffing, but the guile was barely transparent, for he had, at the moment, points that alluded implicitly to their suggested intimacy.

"Don't - say - a - word - about - it," she said, spreading the emphasis and pronunciation evenly and deliberately.

"So it's true that both of you are in cahoots," said Farkle.

"I didn't answer you with anything of the sort."

"Accidentally, you just did," admitted Farkle. "You're in the same boat as me, aren't you?"

Maya, focused purely on the portrait of Farkle that she was sketching unevenly and frantically, exhaled quite heavily, the breath escaping through her barely parted lips. "No," she said a second later. "We are not."

"You and I are rowing the boat together with our separate paddles whilst the two of them are zooming through the seas with the Titanic. And we know what will happen to the Titanic in its journey across the Atlantic, right?"

"It crashes into an iceberg and sinks," said Maya softly. The strokes of her hand on the sheet of paper quicken.

"Demonstrating their all ready relationship, we know that the two survivors will be drifting afloat amid the freezing waters. And who will be there to help them, with the boat available for two extra places for paddle-workers?"

"Us," she answered quietly.

"Precisely."

The tables have turned, he thought. Then he saw the sullen, downcast expression that spread athwart the ramparts of her features. The shadows cut easily through the sharpened edges of her face, the light and dark a stark contrast betwixt each other. He would've thought this a perfect opportunity to utilize for his portrait, but his thoughts, devoid of art and its usefulness in expression, were focused on Maya. He watched as her melancholy demonstration devolve in sadness as the moments crawled onward, and he said worriedly "Are you okay?"

"No," she snapped.

"Why n -"

"Don't ask questions which you can answer yourself, boy genius."

Farkle pursed his lips. He took up his pencil, pointed it at her and said in tense words, "You're not okay because I know that you like Lucas."

"I do not," she counteracted, but it was to no avail. She didn't sound convincing, and the guile between his lips didn't affect Farkle in the way she wanted.

"You do as much as I like Riley," said Farkle slowly.

Maya, despite herself, smirked. "So you admit it?"

Farkle smiled grimly. "Only in the degree that you feel the same way for the blonde Texan."

"It's not that bad," she said. "I've known the kid for over four years, and Riley always was interested in him before I even had talked to him and figured out that he was an all-around great guy. And even then, as I hung out with him a little more, I always put up Riley instead of myself."

"Selfless," said Farkle.

"Yeah." She sighed. "Turns out that was a mistake. I love Riley, yeah, but sometimes, I just want to have Ranger Rick to myself. Lately, I've been getting that, since she's ignoring you, and in turn ignoring him, at lunch, and I have you two to thank for that."

"No need."

Maya looked up at him momentarily. Their blue eyes met, clashing in a sea of cobalt and aquamarine. She said, "You still haven't told me what's going on between you and Riley."

"And don't take offense to the fact that I refuse to incriminate us both by exposing such information," said Farkle. "Unless you want to tell me about you and Lucas, then I won't say much about she and I."

Maya huffed. "I'll try not to." Then, much quieter, to where Farkle had strained his ears just to hear the almost inaudible statement that escaped her lips: "Why couldn't it be you?"

"Huh?" asked Farkle stupidly after acknowledging the declaration with scrutinizing detail.

She looked desperately up at him. Then she repeated herself, an exasperated intonation plaguing her voice.

He reddened. He scratched the back of his neck with a free hand, his nails raking against the skin of crimson coloration. "I don't know," he said.

Maya didn't like this answer. She wrinkled her nose, and said, "It's not fair."

"Life isn't fair, Maya. It punishes those who don't deserve it, and it gives leeway to those who are of unjust stature. It's a mere balancing act that everyone simply despises and wishes would disappear due to its untoward disposition."

"But you could've taken the place of Lucas Friar in my life, and both of our problems would just go away at that point," said Maya. "We wouldn't have to impede on our friends' relationship -"

"But didn't you say that it was inevitable that they would part their ways in the next few coming weeks or months due to their incompatibility?"

Maya paused. "Well, yes -" she began.

Farkle interposed, saying, "And that means that we aren't so bad off, y'know. We just have to wait. Like you did before, right?"

Maya lowered her head. "Yeah, I guess."

Farkle smiled sadly. Silently glancing at the portrait, he saw his likeness represented nearly perfectly on the surface of the white sheet of paper. His sharp nose and his disheveled hair were the defining features that first came to his observation, the things that he first saw in the mirror whenever he awakened from his deep slumber and slunk uneasily into the confines of the bright bathroom, and next came the sharpness of face and the thinness of his slightly quirking lips. His eyes, sunken and carrying beneath them darkened bags that dug deep into his face, gleamed with an archromatic pyre, almost synchronous with his commonplace expression of slight amusement and frustration.

"Looks good," he said.

"Unlike your blank sheet of paper," said Maya in return.

The smarm and snark was back, he thought gleefully.

"At least it's better than anything that my clumsy hand could potentially manifest from this very utensil." He fiddled with the pencil in his hands, eyeing it with scrutiny. "And if I even try to draw, it'll turn out into a small doodle of you with hair waving all over the place and you looking all weird with huge eyes and smiling lips."

"You saying that I don't smile, Minkus?" she asked brazenly.

"It's a scarce sight to behold, really. I think that if it wouldn't be bereaved at the first thought of its appearance, maybe I might appreciate it a little more."

"You'll definitely see it when you're on the ground with your NASA shirt balled in my fist, y'know." But there it was: an amused, unrestrained smile which spread across her features with a definite jocular disposition about its manifestation.

"Better than seeing your frown," he said impudently. "Especially when those lips are just made for smiling."

"Mhm." Whereupon her smile grew in considerable size to where it stretched almost each side of her face. "I bet someone else would appreciate your smooth talking, Mr. Minkus."

"Ah, you would think such things, but I doubt it as much as I doubt the existence of the foundation of Christianity's God."

Maya rose an eyebrow. "Might want to keep that bit of information to yourself, y'know. It's not really hot when someone doubts your religious beliefs."

"Which is why I rarely speak upon it in public. I'll get eaten up like a carcass in the center of a jackal den."

"Good thinking."

"It's not good thinking when there's nothing on your paper, Mr. Minkus," said Miss Keller from behind him.

He turned his head over his shoulder and smiled up at the woman with a sheepish grin that demonstrated his incompetence in the art department. "Yeah. I know, right?"

Miss Keller shook her head. "Just get it finished, Mr. Minkus, and maybe I won't have to fail you this semester for being unable to complete the work assigned to you. Remember what happened last year?"

He shuddered. "Yes, ma'am, I do."

"Then please finish." She sauntered off.

Maya held a hand above her mouth, suppressing a chuckle from slipping from between her lips.

He pressed the lead to the paper, scrawled a few lines of distinct face recognition, and said to Maya, "Not a word of this till I am finished with my portrait, okay? I must have a model immobile so I don't inadvertently give way to my doodlings."

And Maya's suppression of her laughter, though not initially strong and stringent, burst forth from its entanglement, and she chortled loudly. The raps on the table alongside her giggling garnered the attention of unsuspecting individuals, and this unheralded attention, though unwelcome, began the laughter bubbling within Farkle to also emerge, and the two of them laughed in synchronization as the seconds wore on.

A mild, fleeting thought zoomed past the bluffs and edifices of his mind to where their recognition wasn't associated in the scantest of attentions then, but only remarked later in the night when the remembrance of such an interaction appeared unorthodoxly in his mind. It bespoke things he thought unholy and scarcely acceptable in the seas of his uncertainty, but its message, and its blatant meaning, nonplussed even himself, although he wished that it didn't. Coming to him right before he entered the wild dreams and nightmares advocating the silence space of his slumber, it said this:

 _Why couldn't it have been her?_


End file.
